Another campaign by the same team, Wherever you go, you’ll find fender includes a shot of a young man, guitar strapped over his back, climbing aboard the rear platform of a London Transport double-decker making its way down the Embankment. ‘You won’t part with yours either’ was the slogan appended to stylish black and white images showing cool young dudes skydiving, yachting and even commanding a US Army tank – all clinging on to their Fender Stratocasters. These were the brainchild of Don Randall, his sales chief, working with the Californian photographer Bob Perine. And while such appearances and word of mouth brought healthy sales, Fender also invested in memorable advertising campaigns. In New York, construction began on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s peerless Seagram Building.īuddy Holly was one of the first hugely popular stars to play a Strat and many budding musicians were captivated by the sight and sound of Fender’s masterpiece when the bespectacled singer appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958. This was also the year of the first generation Ford Thunderbird, the prototype of Clarence “Kelly” Johnson’s beautifully sinister Mach 2 Lockheed Starfighter and Charles and Ray Eames’s beautifully balanced and lightweight DCM chair (an ideal prop for the design-conscious Strat player).
President Eisenhower announced his highway modernisation programme as Greyhound unveiled its GM Scenicruiser, a split-level coach designed by Roland Gegoux that caught the public imagination: “Every mile a magnificent mile”was the slogan. The year of its launch, saw the Boeing Dash-80, prototype of the 707 jet airliner, take to the air. The Stratocaster was also a part of a wave of deeply stylish mid-century modern US designs. The guitar’s ‘Comfort Contour Body’ fits comfortably into the torso. Three pick-ups allow three very different sounds while a tremelo arm offers that distinctive waver popularised by Hank Marvin. The double horned shape is nicely counterbalanced while also allowing muscians’ fingers to roam freely along neck and fretboard. Its seductive looks, while not an accident, derived from functional requirements. He had an early success with the Telecaster, but the Stratocaster grabbed attention like no other electric guitar before or since. What he understood though was that a new wave of young musicians playing roadhouses and dance halls wanted a bright-sounding instrument that was easy to hold, tune and play. Gilmour owns Stratocaster number 0001 although made in 1954, this is not the first of the breed, but the first to be given a serial number.Ĭuriously, perhaps, Leo Fender, the Californian inventor who created the Stratocaster, along with draftsman and steel guitar virtuoso Freddie Tavares, and with a little help from musician friends, never learned to play the guitar. These include the Eric Clapton, the Jimi Hendrix (flameproof, hopefully) and two David Gilmours, one of which matches exactly the patina of the Pink Floyd guitarist’s famous ‘Black Strat’ featured on The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall.
Its ‘signature’ models –named after famous rockers – sell at a hefty premium. It lent itself very much to the visual aspect of rock’n’roll.”įender continues to craft hundreds of Stratocasters a day in its factory at Corona, California. you could swing it around a little for posing and leaping about. the contoured body was very comfortable, and it’s not a heavy instrument. Recently, Marvin, whose playing is universally admired, told Roger Newell of that the Stratocaster “was like something from space, really, it was so futuristic in its design. Hank Marvin of The Shadows’ fame, who made the ‘Strat’ fashionable in Britain, was given his first – fiesta red with a maple fingerboard and gold-plated fittings – by Cliff Richard in 1959. Celebrating its 60th anniversary, this highly versatile, sleek and supremely good-looking musical instrument defies its age in the most convincing and elegant manner. Old rockers wrinkle as they strut into their sixties, yet the Fender Stratocaster, best loved of all electric guitars and synonymous with rock from Buddy Holly through Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix to Jack White, Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Arctic Monkeys, refuses to age.